Feminine and adult hygiene absorbent personal care articles are often used to protect consumer undergarments and outer garments from soiling, and to collect and retain body exudates containing menses, blood, or urine. Such articles are most commonly placed in the crotch region of garments during use. In the context of such products, comfort, absorbency, and discretion are three main product attributes and areas of concern for the wearers of such articles. In particular, wearers are often interested in knowing that such products will absorb body exudates in order to protect their undergarments, outer garments, or bedsheets from staining. Wearers are also interested in using products that cannot be seen or felt through their undergarments. Finally, wearers are interested in maintaining discretion with respect to the storage of such products prior to use, as well as during the removal of such products from their wrappers or packaging, in preparation for their use.
Feminine and adult hygiene absorbent personal care articles, such as sanitary napkins, pads and panty liners, and adult care undergarment inserts (as opposed to pant, brief, or diaper-type products), typically include at least one or more absorbent layers enclosed between a body-facing, liquid permeable topsheet layer and a garment-facing, liquid impermeable backsheet layer. The topsheet and backsheet layers are typically bonded or otherwise sealed together at their edges, forming a peripheral seal around the article, and sandwiching the absorbent layers there-between. Alternatively, a topsheet layer may be bonded or sealed to a backsheet layer, to offer lighter levels of protection, without the presence of a separate absorbent layer, per se, between them. In either event, such articles are frequently offered to consumers in individual wrappers or envelopes prior to use, in order to preserve their cleanliness until actual use. During use, such articles are often held in place to an undergarment via one or more pressure sensitive adhesive patches or strips, or alternatively, hook and loop style fasteners, positioned on the garment-facing surface of the backsheet layer. Some of these articles also include wing-like structures or extending foldable tabs, for wrapping about the edges of a user's undergarments to further secure them. Such wing-like structures are frequently integral with the absorbent article body, and are constructed from discrete, lateral extensions of both the topsheet and backsheet layers. Alternatively, the wing-like structures may be formed as separate attachments to the article.
The pressure sensitive adhesive patches or strips (also known as garment adhesive) on the garment-facing surface of the backsheet layer and wings (if present), are often covered by a removable, separate release sheet layer, or alternatively, by the article wrapper directly, so as to protect the pressure sensitive adhesive prior to use. Essentially, the separate release sheet layer or wrapper is in a face-to-face relationship with the garment adhesive. Such separate release sheet layer is frequently formed from a coated paper, nonwoven material, or film, and is either presented to the consumer by either being initially and temporarily attached to the article via the garment adhesive, or alternatively, by being more permanently attached to an article-facing surface of a wrapper, which is in turn, situated over the garment adhesive. A temporary connection is present between the garment adhesive and the release sheet. A separate release sheet layer is known to add costs and manufacturing challenges to such absorbent articles.
The release sheet layer or article-facing surface of the article wrapper as the case may be, is desirably coated on one or more surfaces with a peel-enhancing material, such as silicone, in order to facilitate removal/peeling of the article from the separate release sheet layer or wrapper during use. However, even with such coating, release sheets are known to produce an audible noise upon their removal from the article, or upon article removal from the wrapper, which noise can lead to embarrassment by the consumer at the time of readying the article for use.
The pressure sensitive adhesive patches, strips, or other fasteners are usually positioned in separated regions on the garment-facing surface of the article backsheet layer, generally along either the longitudinal or transverse directions of the article. Examples of such adhesive patches, strips, and release sheet/article wrapper combinations are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,181,610 to Quick et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,591,153 to Mattingly III, U.S. Pat. No. 6,500,160 to Mistune et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,632,207 to Rangel et al., and United States Pat. Publication 2011/0009844 to Toro et al., each of which are hereby incorporated by reference thereto in their entirety.
The application of large patches of adhesive to the garment-facing surface of an article backsheet assists in maintaining the article in position within the undergarment, but often results in consumer difficulty in removal of the absorbent article from the release sheet or storage wrapper before use, and/or a consumer's undergarment after use. To this end, attempts have been made to provide tab-like structures on pads or in association with pads, to assist in their removal from wrappers before use, and undergarments after use. Such is described for example in U.S. Pat. No. 6,932,802 to Luizzi et al., and in European Patent 0699427 to Lefebvre Du Grosriez. However, such tab-like structures also add cost and manufacturing challenges to an article, and can lead to consumer confusion during article use.
There is therefore a need for an absorbent article and wrapper arrangement, which arrangement facilitates article removal from the wrapper without the need for a separate release sheet, with reduced audible noise, and without additional tab-like structures, on or in association with such article. There is a further need for such an article that adheres to an undergarment, but which can be easily removed at will by a consumer.
By the very nature of personal care absorbent articles, consumers often seek discretion both in article use, and also in article storage prior to use. Consumers often prefer that those persons around them not be aware that such articles are being worn, or being kept on a consumer's person (in unused form) prior to use. In this regard, absorbent personal care articles have been developed in “rolled” formats, such that they can be efficiently stored in discrete non-identifiable containers, or can be easily carried individually by consumers, in their pockets or purses, without being specifically recognized as being personal care absorbent articles. In such rolled configurations, the traditionally flat pads and liners are rolled about themselves, such that they take on a more tubular and compact configuration. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,827,251 to Moder et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,041,091 to Wheeler et al., and United States Pat. Publication 2006/161125 to Bohlen et al., each illustrate various rolled formats for storing liner and pad-style products prior to use. However, such products have presented unwrapping difficulties. Such products often retain their predisposition to curl once unrolled, making placement on an undergarment by a consumer challenging. Further, it is often difficult to initiate a peel of such articles from a previously rolled wrapper. Finally, the wrappers of such rolled products are often thin, posing manufacturing challenges. Therefore there is a need for such rolled products which can be easily manufactured and peeled during usage.
The large patches of garment adhesive preferred by consumers on backsheet layers, while helping to ultimately secure the pad or liner to a user's undergarment, can make unwrapping even more difficult in such “rolled” formats. There is therefore a need for a rolled absorbent article which can be easily removed from a wrapper, and which generally maintains its unrolled/flat shape prior to placement in an undergarment. Finally, there is a need for simplified manufacturing processes and product configurations which allow for “rolled” format, absorbent article production.
Depending on the specific daily needs of a consumer that uses absorbent personal care articles, such consumer may require extended length liners, pads, or inserts to accommodate the varying undergarment shapes, or varying fluid capture needs of a particular day. For example, it is known that at different times in a woman's monthly menstruation cycle, menstruation exudate amounts can vary. While numerous extended pad products have been developed to accommodate heavier exudate flows or larger surface areas of an undergarment, such as those described for example in U.S. Pat. No. 4,596,570 to Jackson et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 8,377,022 to Noda et al., there is still a need to efficiently produce extended pad products which are available in compact or “rolled” formats. There is a further need for such compact products in which the absorbent article and absorbent article extension are offered to a consumer in close physical proximity, for ease of use.